Would You Eat Insecticide?

On August 24, 2003, seven year-old Kayla Yvonne Allen died face down in her own vomit. She had been poisoned with Atroban, an insecticide used on farms. In 1957, Nikolai Khokhlov, a former KGB assassin, was poisoned with insecticide. Saddam Hussein was inclined to use the slower-acting insecticide Thallium to secretly dispatch dissidents. A macabre reality was that his doses took time to kill. His enemies were often able to emigrate before succumbing. Insecticides are effective killers and easy to find. Unfortunately, they are becoming far too easy to find in our food.

Pest Control 101. Bt toxin kills insects. It’s named for the bacteria it comes from, Bacillus thuringiensis. Bacteria often create toxins. That’s how and why they make us sick and ultimately, can kill us. Bt bacteria aren’t the bad guys. Bt occurs naturally in soil and lots of other places. The toxin is controlled by the bacteria’s genetic code. Bt toxin kills by binding to the gut wall of the target insect and exploding the digestive system of the hapless bug.

Sadly enough, profit-motivated Dr. Frankensteins decided to pluck that toxin-causing gene out of Bacillus thuringiensis and place it in the genetic code of agricultural plants. This creates man-made (and patentable, by the way!) genetically modified organisms or GMOs. When the bug eats the Bt plant, it is poisoned and dies. The most ubiquitous plant carrying the Bt gene is famous in Nebraska: corn. Most of the corn we grow in the United States has had its genetic code altered, not by nature, but by mad science. According to USDA figures, 91 percent of all corn planted in Nebraska has been genetically engineered. Following its man-made genetic instructions, Bt corn creates deadly toxin in each and every cell of the plant, including the kernels.

It’s in you. It’s important to realize there are two basic kinds of corn grown in the United States. The vast majority, over 99 percent, is what is collectively known as “field corn.” Field corn is essentially inedible to humans. It is used mostly for livestock feed and highly processed constructs like high fructose corn syrup, cornstarch and corn proteins mashed into processed food products like corn chips, cookies, sauces, and thousands of other products lining the shelves of your favorite grocer.

The second type of corn is sweet corn, which makes up a tiny amount of the acreage grown in the U.S. Sweet corn is what you buy fresh and cook for dinner. Or you find it frozen or in cans. It’s what you see at roadside stands and farmers markets.

Until recently, only field corn genetically modified to produce insecticide was sold. But in April 2012, Bt GMO sweet corn was being planted across America. By summer, for the first time ever, Americans were able to purchase and directly consume sweet corn with a deadly insecticide in each kernel. We were eating insecticide.

Toxin from GMO corn was in 93% of human blood samples. For years, the industry creating this money-making mockery of nature, GMO corn, insisted any Bt toxin consumed by humans, would be destroyed in the digestive system. Not so, says recent research. Odds are that you have Bt toxin in you right now, even if you’ve never eaten an ear of corn.

Researchers at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec tested blood samples of pregnant women. Bt toxin was present in 93 percent. Toxin was also found in the blood of their unborn children.

The research took place in 2011, before the introduction of toxin-producing sweet corn to the marketplace. How did test subjects get toxin in their blood? Since most GMO field corn is used as livestock feed or in processed foods, the researchers figure the only way was that the Bt toxin persists through the livestock and food processing chain. If Bt toxin is in the food we eat why wouldn’t it get into us?

Bt toxin makes it into the bloodstream so the industry was wrong. Rather than being destroyed in the digestive system, it may be destroying the digestive system. Other research finds that the Bt toxin binds to human cells in a manner similar to the way it does with insects.

BS about Bt GMO advocates argue humans have been genetically modifying living things since agriculture was invented, by intentionally cross-breeding plants or animals having a desired genetic trait with another. True. But there is something natural about species-to-species. We bred horses with horses, beans with beans, cattle with cattle — not mice with tomatoes! Or bacteria with corn. Never until now.

Farmers Market find. This past summer, Bt GMO sweet corn was being sold at Omaha area farmers markets. Consumers had no way of knowing. Even if the seller knew it, they probably thought it was insignificant. But if the Bt toxin gets in your blood, how do you know for sure?

Playing God with nature might make sense if GMO food was proven to be better for us, providing better nutrition, say. But it doesn’t. And like Saddam Hussein’s victims, will we find out too late?

Be well.

Heartland Healing is a New Age polemic describing alternatives to conventional methods of healing the body, mind and planet. It is provided as information and entertainment, certainly not medical advice. It is not an endorsement of any particular therapy, either by the writer or The Reader. Visit HeartlandHealing.com for past articles.